


óró se do bheatha abhaile

by Kells



Series: gifts, requests, and other little bits [3]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Female Steve Rogers, Gen, jumping continuities, one AU meets another, two of them in fact
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-27
Updated: 2014-07-27
Packaged: 2018-02-10 15:23:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2030154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kells/pseuds/Kells
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some guy helps Stevie out of a tough spot; his wife yells at him, and then they take her to lunch. Bucky has some thoughts about how and why they seemed so out of place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	óró se do bheatha abhaile

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ariadne_odair](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariadne_odair/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Just A Girl From Brooklyn](https://archiveofourown.org/works/902116) by [ariadne_odair](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariadne_odair/pseuds/ariadne_odair). 



> this is probably the closest I'll ever get get to happy kidfic, which isn't saying much for my ability to do happy kidfic.  
> this is maybe an outtake of how the third part of the long-form series will go, in that the next one involves them getting chucked through the multiverse by means of strange science machines and ariadne let me borrow her Stevie to try it out. that's what my S+J are doing in someone else's 1930, anyway, and why they have deadlines they can't miss to get out of there.
> 
> this 'verse is ariadne's, so I think you should all go read her lovely Stephanie Rogers things to see how Stevie grows up awesome! and then you can tell her how her Stevie is the adorablest (well, second adorablest. she already knows I like her Bucky best.)

It’s Stevie on her own against three guys, which is…not good, but not the worst it’s ever been.  She squares her shoulders and tries to sound sure of herself.

“Call me that to my face, I dare ya.”

It’s not the only thing the big jerk calls her, and he doesn’t stop at cussing her out. Stevie blocks as many of his hits as she can, wishing like crazy she’d waited until Bucky wasn’t being kept in late before she’d picked another fight.

"I can do this all day," she spits, and one of the other guys winds his fist back. Stevie shuts her eyes, knowing this one's going to hurt- but he never lands the blow.

“Hey,” a man’s voice breaks in. “You wanna pick on someone your own size?”

They never do- the punks scatter without a word, and a pair of new-looking boots under heavy woolen trousers come into view as Stevie’s rescuer offers her a hand up. Stevie lowers her arms cautiously and almost laughs out loud when she sees the guy. He’s maybe six foot two and built like an athlete- long and lean, but solid like anything. Even those idiots must have realized he could have knocked them into next week without even trying.

“You’re way bigger’n them,” she mumbles; he shrugs ruefully.  

“What was I gonna say, 'would you fellas kindly go home to your mothers?' Sometimes you gotta speak their language. What’s your name, pretty lady?”

Stevie looks at him reproachfully, shocked in spite of herself that he would make fun of her so soon after saving her bacon, but his smile reaches his eyes, which are warm and kind of soft. She thinks maybe he really means it. He probably has a kid sister, she decides; Bucky looks at her like that sometimes, and he's a bit like an older brother. She tells him her name, anyway, and the guy startles like he’s stepped on something sharp. 

“That’s a real swell name, hon. I’m James. Does your mam know you’re out here defending the streets from idiots of all sizes?”

Stevie giggles at his phrasing, but her voice is choked when she tells him her mom’s been gone two years already. James looks stunned for a moment, squeezing the hand he had been shaking very earnestly, then asks whether Stevie lives with her daddy. When she says she lives at the orphanage because Joe Rogers is gone too, but that’s more okay because she doesn’t really remember him, the guy looks so sad that Stevie wonders if he’s going to cry. Before she can do anything about that, someone else bursts in on them.

“James! There you are, thank God.”

The blur of coat and gloves solidifies into the figure of a woman, very beautiful and very worried, who grabs Stevie’s new friend and kisses him, hard, right on the mouth like they’re not standing in the middle of the street where anyone- and Stevie- could see them. Stevie drops her gaze and watches their shoes instead of their faces. Afterwards, the woman stays very close as she grumbles at him. When she drops one of her hands, her rings sparkle in the light and Stevie realizes they’re married. And real fancy, too, if those diamonds are much to go by.

“Does this look like the church to you? Stupid boy, I really thought maybe you were-”

“I’m right here,” James promises, and kisses her back, like it’s an argument and he wants his side heard too.

“This is Stephanie Rogers,” he says softly. Stevie likes the way he says her name- like it really means something, even though they just met. Like he didn’t forget about her as soon as this gorgeous girl breezed in and planted one on him like she owned his face.

“I was heading there, but I ran into this little darlin’ so of course I stopped to chat.”

Stevie watches his face carefully, but he doesn’t seem to be joking this time either. James’s girl raises an eyebrow at her.

“You don’t have to lie for him, you know. He can take his licks like a big boy if he got caught skippin’ out on me.”

 “He was great,” Stevie says helpfully. She doesn’t think the dame’s as mad as she’s acting, but she doesn’t want him to get in trouble either.

“Scared those guys off without even doing much.”

At this, Stevie gets to see what real anger looks like from James's wife.

“How many? What the hell were ‘those guys’ doing harassing one sweet little girl?”

They’re both glaring so hard that Stevie wonders if she should apologise for getting them involved, but then the woman- who James says is Maire- finds a handkerchief in her bag and kneels to clean Stevie’s cuts. Stevie tries to back away, but there isn’t very far to go.

“Wait! You don’t have to-”

“Hush,” Maire says absently. “It won’t take a minute, honey.”

No one’s called her ‘honey’ since her mom- Stevie sighs softly, and then has to assure both Maire and her husband that nothing hurts, and everything’s okay. It’s weird letting someone who isn’t Bucky look after her after a scrape, but having two grown-ups pay attention to her at once is kinda nice, as well. The sisters are great, she knows that, but they’re so  _busy_ all the time.

“This time wasn’t so bad,” Stevie says by way of reassuring her protectors. It doesn’t quite work.

“Does this happen a lot?”

It does, but there’s a dangerous edge to Maire’s voice, and James looks pretty grim, so Stevie tries to cheer them up a bit.

“Most of the time Bucky’s here. He’s pretty good at keeping them off our backs.”

Maire smiles so hard it makes her husband laugh. Stevie, thinking they might be making fun of his name, tells them a bit crossly that James Buchanan Barnes was named after a president. They both look gobsmacked at this news. Maire turns to her husband.

“Who are _you_ named after?”

His mother’s grandfather, James says like he’s not very sure. He was an Ulster-via-Glasgow Scot, whatever that is- Maire makes a face and James laughs again but they don't explain to Stevie and she doesn't ask. As far as James knows, he wasn’t a president.

Stevie reminds him that you have to at least go to America before you can be President. The James who isn’t named after a president smiles at her.

“Listen, you don’t have to say yes, but we were gonna get us some lunch, if you’d like to come.”

Maire tilts her head like a little bird.

“You know we’ve gotta be out of here in 90 minutes tops, right?”

James says it doesn’t take an hour to find a hot meal in Brooklyn. Stevie thinks that’s probably true if you know where to look, but she really doesn’t want them to argue because of her.

“It’s okay. You don’t have to-”

Her stomach growls loudly. Stevie stops talking, surprised; James laughs a bit before cutting himself off with an apologetic glance her way.

“I could eat,” Maire decides. Suddenly, she looks very excited.

“Isn’t  _Carlo’s_  on this block?”

* * *

Stevie stares, amazed, at the giant bowls being set down at other tables.

"Are we gonna eat  _here_?"

James frowns.

"Is that okay? We don’t have to-"

"No! This is good."

It’s not just good. It’s unbelievable. Stevie's never heard of most of the things on the menu, so Maire picks for her. They get bread at the table, but Stevie watches Maire shake her head resolutely and refuses to eat any of it either. James huffs, amused, and snaps a breadstick into three so they can each have a bit. Maire grumbles about getting full on things that aren’t her pasta but eats it anyway, and James looks as proud as if he'd baked the thing himself. Suddenly feeling very shabby in her gravel-stained blue smock, Stevie murmurs that she’s never eaten in a restaurant before. She thinks they might laugh, or look at her with that shocked sadness from before, but James confesses that they hadn’t either, until they were nearly 20. They used to come by here and pretend, he says quietly, and both he and Maire look very far away for a second.

“Always said we’d come back when we had the cash, which we never did ‘til now.”

The pasta might be magic, Stevie thinks. There’s more of it than she could eat in two days, to start with, and it’s so hot- she hasn’t had a stove-hot meal since she was home with her mom. She ducks her head, hoping she isn’t going to start crying about lunch, but when she glances up between her lashes to see if they’ve noticed James and Maire have their heads bent close together as they talk quietly in a voice so low that even Stevie can’t hear what they’re saying. By the time they have a question for her, she's recovered and is licking tomato sauce off her spoon with joyful abandon.

“So,” Maire says suddenly. “This James Bucky Buchanan. Is he your fella?”

Stevie nearly drops her fork, but she thinks James's face is redder than hers. 

“Maire!”

“What? He could be!”

“She’s just a baby, a chroí.”

"I'm ten," Stevie protests. Bucky's twelve. They're really quite grown up.

“He’s a hypocrite,” Maire assures Stevie with another probably-pretend scowl.

“This joker asked me to marry him when we were  _five years old_ \- got my daddy to agree to it and everything.”

Stevie giggles.

“Did you say yes?”

James pouts like he’s still five years old.

“‘Course she said yes. What kind of chump d’you think I am?”

They both laugh at him and refuse to answer, which makes him whine and pretend to sulk until his wife catches his hand and presses her lips to his fingers. Stevie’s never seen adults tease each other like that- she keeps worrying that they’re going to fight, but they mostly look like they wish they could be cuddling instead of sitting a nearly-okay five inches apart. She darts a quick look around the restaurant, but no one seems to be paying them much attention.

She tells them about Bucky, how he was already at the home when she got there, and how he’s most of the reason she’s never given up and tried to make a run for it. James looks like he might cry again. Poor guy really doesn’t like it when people lose their parents, Stevie thinks, and asks tentatively whether they grew up in the orphanage too. They didn’t, though- Maire says they’re from Brooklyn Heights, which isn’t too far away, and they lived with James’s mom until they were sixteen. Stevie sees the shadows in their faces, and decides not to ask what they did after that. Instead, she asks where all they’ve been, if they haven’t been in New York, and they tell her funny stories about Chicago and Ohio and one she’s not sure can be true about Berlin.

When they’re done eating, Maire makes the waiter- a waiter, who brought everything to the table and called Stevie ‘little miss’ and told James what a lovely family he had, which only hurt a little- pack Stevie’s leftovers away so she can take them home and “share them with your president, if you like.” They get coffee, and milk for Stevie- which she barely touches, but which is fresh and thick. She has to bite back her giggles when James sighs blissfully into his cup. Maire doesn’t bother.

“That good, huh?”

“Tastes like coming home,” he murmurs, and his wife leans in to kiss his cheek. This time, Stevie sees a woman glance over curiously, but no one says anything.

She waits with Maire while James goes to pay for lunch; his wife laughs at the relish with which he pays the check.

“We never thought we’d get to do this,” she says quietly. Suddenly, she’s watching Stevie very intently.

“You gonna be okay, sweetheart?”

Stevie’s not sure why the question makes her throat close up, but James, making his way over, answers before she has to figure out how to fix that.

“‘Course she is. She’s the bravest kid in Brooklyn, isn’t she?”

Maire grins at that, accepting it as true because her husband says so, and wanders over to the corner store she’s been eyeing so she can get some secret thing she won’t explain. Unexpectedly, her husband crouches so he can look Stevie dead in the eye.

“I mean that, you know.”

It takes Stevie a second to get it.

“I didn’t do anything,” she protests. Her cheeks heat; her throat feels tight all over again. James puts his hands on her shoulders, very gently.

“Those guys were god-awful,” he says quietly. “The worst kind of scum, spouting filth they don't understand. You know none of it was true, don't you?"  

Stevie scuffs a shoe on the sidewalk, anxious and awkward under such careful, almost admiring scrutiny. He won’t think she’s so brave if he realizes how close she is to crying.

“Sister M says I'm a fighter.”

She  _thinks_ that's a good thing.

“Sure,” James agrees, still very serious. “But you’re also a real good girl, sweetheart, okay? And smart as a whip, right, and braver’n any little boy I’ve ever known.”

He smiles when Stevie meets his eyes, unable to contain her shock. He looks like he gets it, she thinks, and it’s much less hard to imagine this guy as a little kid in a threadbare coat, watching older guys take their girls to Carlo’s and promising himself he’d get there one day. Maybe one day she'll make Bucky come back here with her.

“It’s true, honey, cross my heart.”

She's not sure it is, but when this guy says it with that quiet conviction Stevie finds she wants to believe him. She throws her arms around him, pinning him in place with the force of her gratitude.

“Thank you,” she whispers, and she doesn’t just mean for lunch. James doesn’t say anything, but his hand cups the back of her head, just gently. Stevie lets herself wonder for a second whether this is what it would feel like to have a daddy still.

“Will you come see me when you come back? I can show Bucky to you." 

He grins, but his eyes are sad.

“I wish to God we could. Sweetheart, I don’t think we’re gonna be back this way for a good long while.”

That’s not his fault, is it, and its not like they owe her anything anyway, so Stevie smiles bravely, and James squeezes her shoulders once before he lets go. Maire, who has come back with a little package, hugs her quickly.

"Don’t let your president eat all of his at once, okay? I know what these James types are like.”

Stevie’s grin is a little brighter as she accepts the unrealistically large bar of chocolate. Bucky’s never going to believe  _any_ of this, but he sure won’t complain about all the food.

“Well,” she says quietly, “I guess you gotta go.”

They do, and they all know it, so Stevie offers them a little wave and smiles when James offers his wife his arm, like a gentleman. They’re not quite out of earshot, so Stevie catches the end of a phrase- “take them with us.” She feels her heart hammer in her chest, but Maire is shaking her head, her expression very sad. Of course they can’t, Stevie thinks. They don’t even seem to know where they’re going or how long they’ll be gone. And they haven’t even  _met_  Bucky- maybe he wouldn’t want to go, anyway, and then Stevie would have to stay with him in any case.

She can’t help giggling when she realizes they’re going to kiss out in the open  _again._ It’s different, though- Maire has her hand on her husband’s cheek, and Stevie thinks it looks like a promise or a please-feel-better. She thinks he really meant it about taking them with. Or he just misses Brooklyn coffee, maybe, and the taste of coming home.

* * *

 

“They’re probably in the mob,” Bucky decides around a hunk of their chocolate. Stevie shoves at his shoulders, annoyed- maybe he’s still sore he wasn’t there to deal with it himself, right, but he shouldn’t say such awful things.

“Of course they’re not. He was supposed to meet her at church.”

“To go to a service or to steal the candlesticks?”

Stevie imagines Maire furtively stuffing altar candles into her bag while James keeps watch and bursts out laughing instead of punching her ungrateful idiot of a best friend. The idiot, mistaking hilarity for agreement, presses on enthusiastically.

“It makes sense, you know! They say they’ve been out of town and they’re going away again but they have no, you know, stuff? Clothes and …whatever else you need on a trip?”

Maybe he took that stuff to the station before he came to meet her, Stevie suggests acidly. Bucky accepts this as plausible, but he thinks in that case Maire should have met her husband at the station instead of wandering around the back alleys of Brooklyn. Stevie says she thinks they just wanted to see the old neighbourhood, but Bucky insists that’s not enough to exonerate Steph’s new friends.

“Do  _you_ know anyone from Brooklyn who has cash to burn on strange kids?”

Stevie frowns: it was a giant bowl of noodles and some candy- nicer than anything she’s ever had, probably, but not exactly diamonds and sapphires. Although Maire had had those too- but there’s no need to tell Bucky that.

“You think everyone else in that place came in from the city? Maybe they’re just nice, did you think about that?”

Apparently that’s not a barrier to mobsterdom either, though.

“There must be  _some_ nice gangsters. Maybe they don’t want to be in the mob? Like he got in some trouble when they were kids and he has to make it right, but after that they’ll go straight.”

"He didn’t get in trouble," Stevie insists, ignoring the burning question of what had driven them from James’ mother’s house.

“I don’t think his girl woulda let him. You can give that back if you’re going to sit there talking crazy about them when they’re not even here to answer.”

“Maybe they just have friends in the mob,” Bucky allows reluctantly; recognizing the concession, Stevie lets him keep the chocolate.

“I mean, those other guys- Tony, Clint- those are good names for gangsters, ain’t they?”

Stevie reminds him sulkily that one of those others was a doctor.

“Like Doc Holliday!”

“That guy was a dentist, Bucky.”

Stevie knows this intimately, because every time the boys take it into their heads to play OK Corral- which they do a lot- Bucky always wants her to be Doc Holliday. Stevie knows it’s because she’s the skinniest and the blondest, but one time she said that out loud and Sister V got all mysterious and told her that sometimes there was more to a young man’s wishes than met the eye. Which is often true in Bucky’s case, but unless he wants her to see a dentist Stevie doesn’t see how it can possibly apply.

“They’re not gangsters, okay?”

He lets it go, probably because he’s scared she’s going to stop sharing the chocolate that was  _certainly not_  paid for with dirty money. Stevie thinks they’re done with the subject, but three days later Bucky jabs her awake with the kind of smile that usually means one or both of them is going to get sent to bed without supper. Stevie sighs a bit and makes room, already reaching for their secret chocolate. She wakes up more fully when Bucky waves her off impatiently; he must be  _very_ excited if he has no time to think of chocolate.

“I worked it out.”

“What, Buck?”

“Your gangster and his gal.”

Stevie scowls.

“He is  _not_ -”

“No, I know. I told you, I worked it out. He’s a cop.”

Stevie blinks.

“Does Sister V know you got into the altar wine?”

He makes a face, either because he knows she knows he’d never get caught or because they also both know that wine is gross so he wouldn’t bother in the first place. He really has put some thought into it, at least: the yarn he spins is complex and nearly all-encompassing. In it, James's dad was a normal cop, but he got too close to some gangland schemes and they went after him. That’s what happened when James was sixteen, and that’s why he gets so sad when people talk about their parents dying. So he decided he’d do anything- anything- to get justice for his father, so they sent him undercover to get much closer than his daddy could in uniform. Maire knows, of course- that's why she was so scared when her husband didn't show on time. The bust is gonna go down soon- they were in town for James to update his boss, and they both knew it was their last trip to Brooklyn because you don't come back when you know there's a hit out on you.

But Tony and Clint and them will protect them, Bucky adds hastily when Stevie goes a bit pale at the thought, and there's Doc Banner to make sure they’re okay if they ever do get sick or shot or anything.

"And then they’ll live happily ever after," Stevie murmurs. She hopes James will find a way to make his own coffee so it tastes like coming home.

Bucky nods and helps himself to their chocolate.

"Sure, Stevie."

He’s still watching her, waiting for a reaction, and Stevie realizes how much time he must have spent trying to get that story right, just for her.

"Nothing would ever taste like home if you weren’t there," she tells him sleepily.

"I don’t know what that means," Bucky complains, but Stevie thinks he sounds pleased.

"Too bad," she mumbles, and shuts her eyes as her fingers curl in his shirt. Bucky sighs like dealing with her’s the most difficult job he’ll ever have to do, but he doesn’t try to leave until he thinks she’s asleep so Stevie figures he doesn’t mind too much.

**Author's Note:**

> title is yet another Irish song; this one's title translates to "yay! you're home" which seemed appropriate.
> 
> also, why Bucky hears "Doc Holliday" and thinks of Stevie (per Wikipedia, this is Wyatt Earp's account):  
> "Doc was a dentist, not a lawman or an assassin, whom necessity had made a gambler; a gentleman whom disease had made a frontier vagabond; a philosopher whom life had made a caustic wit; a long lean, ash-blond fellow nearly dead with consumption, and at the same time the most skillful gambler and the nerviest, speediest, deadliest man with a six-gun that I ever knew."


End file.
